


it's good to be alive (again)

by dreamrecurrentdreams



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics)
Genre: (alternately titled: on coming back to life and rebuilding burnt bridges), Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Discussion of past sexual assault, Discussions on Dying and Loss, Literary References & Allusions, M/M, Tenderness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-26
Updated: 2020-01-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:42:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22416439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamrecurrentdreams/pseuds/dreamrecurrentdreams
Summary: See, the thing about returning from the dead - about crawling out of the Valley of Death and into the earthly plane - is that Jason isn’t so much a person as he is a soul returned to a vessel, a body that had once given way to a relentless flurry of blows, to the sound of the metal crowbar cracking down on his flesh, the taste of metallic tang of blood spilling from him, the impact of the white-hot explosion consuming him.So when it rains, it pours - and his body remembers it all.
Relationships: Dick Grayson/Jason Todd
Comments: 53
Kudos: 260





	it's good to be alive (again)

**Author's Note:**

> hello friends! after tumbling into the dcu fandom over the summer, i spent the following months writing what would come to be both a tribute to jason todd and to the works of literature and poetry i imagine would resonate with him and us all.  
> as a series of character studies, this work remixes pre new 52 and new 52 moments from the comics. thank you in advance for bearing with the artistic liberties i've taken with character timelines and the fact i'm still new to the franchise :)

_“There is love in me the likes of which you’ve never seen. There is rage in me the likes of which should never escape. If I am not satisfied in the one, I will indulge the other.”_ \- Mary Shelley, Frankenstein 

It’s thunderstorming and Jason finds himself once out on the fire escape watching the rainfall. The air sings with electricity and his body can’t help but respond in turn, nerves aflame in anticipation for the crack of thunder to shatter the skies and spill lightning onto the city below. 

Basked in the unearthly glow of the lightning, Gotham is especially beautiful and terrifying. With each burst of white light, she is thrown into sharp relief, her unforgiving edges and cesspools of darkness and untamed wilderness exposed for him to see. 

It sears Jason to the bone to see Gotham like this.

See, the thing about returning from the dead - about crawling out of the Valley of Death and into the earthly plane - is that he isn’t so much a person as he is a soul returned to a vessel, a body that had once given way to a relentless flurry of blows, to the sound of the metal crowbar cracking down on his flesh, the taste of metallic tang of blood spilling from him, the impact of the white-hot explosion consuming him. 

So when it rains, it pours - and his body remembers it all. He is Frankenstein, cursed by his knowledge of life and death that burns him from inside and out; he is the creature, deadened flesh revived into monstrous being with no place to go in this strange new world. 

And isn’t that something, that Jason Peter Todd, born in the dregs of Crime Alley to an abusive father and an addict mother, is literate enough to know the difference between Frankenstein and the monster?

Jason knows too the end to the story. How Frankenstein dies, consumed by the weight of his sins. How the monster, mourning that he is alone with only a violence he cannot contain within himself, vows to erase himself from the world. 

He slips through the window like a shadow, leaving puddles on the floor as he shucks off his jacket and jeans. It’s become habit when he pulls off his shirt to smooth a hand over the prongs of the autopsy scar stretching from his shoulders down his chest. 

There is no one he can share this with. There is no one he can make love with, whose fingers will caress the stitches, whose lips will press to his skin and whisper, “you came back after all.” There is only Gotham, bleached bone-white outside his window: and his untamed wilderness and cesspools of darkness and unforgiving edges are exposed for her to see. 

_________________________

Four years after his death, Jason finds Dick Grayson in his apartment, glowing golden in the sunlight. 

Dick, who should’ve been Icarus, soaring too close to the sun only to tumble out of the sky and into the sea once the heat had dissolved his beautiful golden wings.

But Dick would never fall, not when he had wings inked onto his skin.

Four months before he would die at the hands of Joker, Jason had borne witness to Dick’s newly tattooed wings. 

Jason had woken up at the crack of dawn to finish reading _The Iliad_ for a school assignment when his bedroom door creaked open. 

“Still up at this hour, Jaybird?” came Dick’s voice from around the corner.

“You know it,” he replied, slipping a bookmark onto his current page before closing the book. “What’s up?” 

Dick stepped into view, offering him a wan smile. “Just wanted to say hi and to let you know I might not be able to spar with you today. Can you find it in your heart to forgive me?” 

Jason was on his feet before he realized it, reaching for Dick. “I told you to be more careful!” he snapped. “Where are you hurt?”

Dick laughed, batting away Jason’s hand. “It’s nothing too serious! I just got a tattoo and the artist vowed to hunt me down if I didn’t take good care of it. Apparently that means no rigorous exercise for a day or two.” 

Jason stepped away at that. Tattoos were in general a no-go; the more detailed a mark, the greater chance they could give away an identity. Plus Bruce in all his paternal righteousness would throw a fit. Not that he could control Dick’s life anymore, not when Dick had flown the coop long ago. 

“It must have been important,” he said instead, shoving his hands into his pockets. 

“It is.” And then Dick hesitated. “Would you want to see it, maybe?” 

And even though he had been sparring with Dick for the past month, Jason had to fight down the blush threatening to crawl up his face at the thought Dick trusted him enough to let him see. “Sure,” he stuttered.

Dick smiled at that, a real smile that reached his eyes this time. “I promise it’s nothing too scandalous.” 

When Dick took off his shirt, Jason’s breath caught in his throat for a different reason. He took in the intricately tattooed feathers blossoming across Dick’s back. 

“Robin, born on the first day of spring,” he said and it wasn’t until Dick’s shoulders drew taut that he realized he’d even spoken the words out loud, the same ones Dick had quietly told him when he asked for the story behind the name. 

“You remember,” Dick said. 

“Yeah. How could I not?” _How could I not remember how it all started?_ is what Jason wanted to say. _How could I not remember whose wings I learned to fly on?_

He swallowed down the words and pressed a hand between Dick’s shoulder blades. He felt Dick shiver beneath his touch. “It’s beautiful,” he said, and he meant both the sweeping elegance of the inked feathers and the graceful arch of Dick Grayson’s back.

“Thank you, Jay.” Jason closed his eyes at the warmth of Dick’s voice. He wanted Dick press his voice into his skin and onto the corner of his lips. He wanted to be enfolded in his warmth.

Four months later, Jason would die at the hands of Joker, swallowed by the heat of an undying sun.

And then it would take another four years for them to come back together like this, Dick Grayson, glowing golden in the sunlight in Jason’s apartment, and Jason Todd, the true fallen son. 

“It’s the middle of the day,” Jason says, to shatter the delicate silence building between them, the thought that Dick might’ve deliberately sought him out on this particular day. 

“I don’t have to be _Day_ wing to come and visit you, do I?” replies Dick, but his voice is tight.

“What do you want, Dick?” 

“Nothing!” Dick bursts out. “ I could never — I could never ask anything of you today _._ You don’t think I’ve forgotten what day it is, do you?”

“You tell me,” Jason says and his voice comes out more venomous than he expected, taut with a rage that flares white-hot in his mind, acid-green against his eyelids. “You didn’t come to my funeral, Dick, you tell _me_ if I should believe you would remember a single fucking detail about me.” He watches Dick close his eyes for a moment, grief unfurling across his features.

When Dick next speaks, his voice is quiet. “Bruce didn’t tell me right away that you had — that you weren’t here anymore. I had to find out a month later. And I hated myself for it. I hated that I couldn’t be there for you in life or death.”

“Don’t make this about you!” Jason snarls. “Don’t —” _Don’t act like you care about me. Don’t act like you were hurt by my death. Don’t act like I matter to you._

“It was never about me, Jay. It was always you,” Dick replies, and the simplicity of the statement knocks the wind out of Jason’s lungs. “You were on my mind all the time but it felt I could only give you all of my time and attention one day of the year.” He now offers Jason a small smile that sets the clear blue skies of his eyes off-kilter and gestures to an object on the table behind him, what looks to be a bouquet of flowers wrapped in tissue paper. “Today I went ahead and bought these only to realize on the way over that I’d be taking them to an empty grave. And you’re — well, you’re back now so I thought I might as well just bring them here.”

Before Jason can stop himself, an incredulous laugh slips out. “You can’t just bring a formerly dead guy flowers for the anniversary of his death, Dickie. What, did you water them with your tears for me on your way over?”

“That’s not funny! Don’t joke about things like that,” Dick snaps before his eyes go wide with realization. “Oh God, Jason, I’m so sorry, I—”

“You do know you can say ‘joke’ or any variation of ‘Joker’ without sending me into berserker mode?” Jason interrupts but he can’t stop the grin from spreading across his face as he adds, “It’s not going to kill me if you do.” 

A surprised laugh tumbles from Dick and it’s enough to ease the tension building up between them that Jason yields with a resigned sigh. “Yeah, I’ll take your stupid flowers, Dickiebird.” 

But they’re not stupid, not really. Because when Jason accepts the bouquet of daffodils, fingers their delicate yellow petals, he thinks about how they are the first flowers to be born in spring, how they symbolize rebirth, new beginnings. 

“They’re beautiful,” Jason says. “Thanks.”

Dick’s face lights up and Jason does not look away this time.

__________________________

Tim finds Jason smoking on the rooftop of the safehouse none of the Bats were supposed to know about.

Jason’s settled down enough for the evening that he only casts Tim a single glance before digging a box of Camel Lights out of his jacket pocket and shaking one out onto his palm. But even a single glance is enough to confirm that Tim’s slightly favoring his left side, even if he’s holding himself as if nothing’s wrong.

He’ll admit it took time to figure out Timothy Jackson Drake; he had nailed his successor as coy, calculating, and cold in equal measure but he hadn’t thought to add compartmentalizing to the list until the haze of anger had cleared from his vision and he could see now a boy who knew loss intimately and sought to fill the void in any way he could. 

“Replacement,” he says around his cigarette to fend off the fact he’s apparently gone soft. “And to what do I owe the honor of your company on a fine night like this?” 

“Come to think of it, you haven’t called me that in months,” Tim replies instead of answering his question. He neatly tucks in his limbs so he’s sitting next to Jason and takes off his cowl to rest on the ledge beside him. “Can I have one?”

“No.” Jason lights up his cigarette and inhales, letting the smoke linger in his lungs for a single moment before exhaling in the next. 

“Am I not good enough?” 

Tim’s voice is playful enough but when Jason levels a look at him, he tilts his head upwards in a slight show of defiance, his mouth pinched. Without the cowl, he’s pale, porcelain face tapering into a fine point. Like this, he looks almost fragile. As if he hadn’t lived through losing his parents, girlfriend, and best friend, and made it out the other side somehow.

The thought is a sobering one, enough for Jason to toss out the reply, “Smoking’s bad for you.” 

Tim laughs. “The superhero lifestyle’s just as bad for me, if not worse. And you’re concerned about my lungs?” 

“You asking for a cig and me turning you down are both choices we can make. But there’s no choice in doing the work that we do.” And as he fought Tim in the catacombs fueled by the rage that Bruce had replaced him, Jason had understood deep down that there was nothing Tim could’ve done to resist the force that would draw him to the door of the Manor, the truth about Batman teetering from his lips and the evidence of the camera roll like an albatross heavy on his neck.

Instead, he had carried the terrible knowledge of the rewards and risks of becoming Robin on his narrow shoulders. Jason had left the world a good soldier and Tim had stepped up to take his place. In hindsight, maybe that was why Tim was as small as he was; he’d borne the crushing weight of the Mission through an adolescence that Jason never had the chance to live through. 

And yet, even though Jason stood a head taller than him, Tim had always lifted his head high. He couldn’t afford to give ground, not when he had to see through the wars that killed Stephanie and his father. He hadn’t given ground either when he had been ousted from the role of Robin. He too had been left in the dust like Jason, left to pick himself off the ground and take up a new mantle 

And here they are now, still alive and fighting for the light of tomorrow to reach Gotham in spite of everything because that’s the only path they return to time and time again. 

They might as well make themselves comfortable, settling into a fate like this. _Fuck it,_ Jason thinks and says, “Fine, just this once,” extending his cigarette to Tim. 

Tim smiles at him crookedly and accepts it, his fingers brushing against Jason’s. Tim’s fingers are pale and slender, almost ghostly in the darkness, but they hold steady as he raises the cigarette to his lips and breathes in. He’s flesh and blood, equally capable of receiving and giving damage. 

Jason waits for him to finish the cigarette, stubbing it out on the ledge, before saying, “I’ve indulged you enough but I’m not going to let it slide that you ignored your injuries to come see me.” 

“I’m fine,” Tim replies offhandedly.

“Did I fucking ask you for your opinion?” 

“No, but I know you’re going to take care of me anyways.”

“What makes you think I care?” Jason retorts. “Brace yourself.” He pulls Tim up. Tim’s mouth twists at the pain but he still smiles at Jason anyways. 

_________________

“Morning, Jay,” says Dick from atop the kitchen counter, swinging his legs. “A little bird told me you’ve been acting nicer than usual lately and I thought I’d come by to celebrate the occasion.”

“The little bird should know I’ve got a reputation to maintain and that snitches get stitches,” Jason responds. Dick’s in civilian clothes now, a soft-looking black sweater and denim jeans, but if Jason closes his eyes, he can imagine Dick on the countertop wearing nothing but one of his shirts, large enough on Dick’s frame that one sleeve would slide down to reveal golden skin. He stifles the thought before it can progress any further by ramming his shoulder against Dick’s as he reaches for a mug in the cabinet above the sink. “Also you and I have very different opinions on what a ‘good morning’ looks like if your definition includes courting death at ass o’clock in the morning. I could’ve shot you to hell before you even had the time to consider what a colossally bad idea it was to barge into the Red Hood’s place uninvited.” 

Dick only looks at him and says, “You can’t hurt me. Not anymore.” He says it with such unshakable faith that Jason almost misses his next sentence. “And I’d say sorry but I thought you might want this now rather than later.” Belatedly, Jason realizes Dick’s cradling a worn paperback in his hands. When Jason recognizes the book in Dick’s hands, his mouth goes dry. 

He puts his mug down on the countertop, carefully enough so it doesn’t betray the tremors in his hands. “Where’d you find that?”

“Alf found it in one of the alcoves of the library, all the way in the back. He said he’d often find you curled up in there with a book in your free time, that it was your happy place.” Dick’s mouth tugs to the side as he hands Jason the book. 

Jason smooths a hand over the faded cover. His copy of _Pride and Prejudice_ is as well-loved as it was in his memory of it. When he flips through, he stops at a set of passages highlighted in an eye-searing yellow. 

_“You have no regard, then, for the honour and credit of my nephew! Unfeeling, selfish girl! Do you not consider that a connection with you must disgrace him in the eyes of everybody?”_

_“I am only resolved to act in that manner, which will, in my own opinion, constitute my happiness, without reference to_ you, _or to any person so wholly unconnected with me._

_Neither duty, nor honour, nor gratitude,” replied Elizabeth, “have any possible claim on me, in the present instance.”_

His memory might’ve been distorted by the blurring line between life and death but Jason does remember this clearly: the disjointed slide of the highlighter against the page as he pressed down on the nib as hard as he could, as if he could imprint the same message on his mind that it was possible to live without obligation to others, even in the library of the man who had given him a new life. Even if his hand trembled as he marked up the pages, he had laid claim to the Wayne Manor’s copy of _Pride and Prejudice_ and the idea that he too could someday find a place in the world that he would never have to give up. 

He had been delusional to believe the world would ever stop taking from him but standing here reunited with _Pride and Prejudice_ , he allows himself to believe for once that he is due his own share of happiness. 

“Yeah,” Jason says at last when he realizes Dick is watching him steadily. “I was happy.” 

“Good,” replies Dick before he nudges the paper bag he must’ve set down on the countertop earlier. “I might not be able to outdo Alf in the gift-giving department but I brought breakfast as an additional peace offering.”

“You’re all right, I guess,” Jason concedes when he opens the paper bag and sees raspberry danishes wrapped in napkins inside. 

Dick only laughs at that. “Only ‘all right’, huh? You’ve got pretty high standards, Mr. Todd. Guess I better start bringing more books over to appease you.” 

And what Jason wants to say in turn is that Dick, filling the air with the sound of his laughter and the scent of freshly baked goods and the sunlight streaming in through his windows, is enough. That he wants to keep Dick and his warmth into this place he’s made for himself. 

But to do so would be to clip Dick’s wings and he would never forgive himself for doing exactly what Bruce tried. 

So he says nothing and resolves only to hold onto the moment. 

____________

Steph invites him over for a night of gossip, drinks, and nail-painting. He of course accepts; while the Red Hood neither plays nice nor puts up with anyone’s bullshit, Jason Todd has respect for Stephanie Brown, who keeps her feet planted when she pulls her punches. He knows a child of Gotham when he sees one. He knows her too as a kindred soul, born to a lowlife criminal, rising to Bruce’s side as a misfit Robin only to fall by his iron fist. 

Plus, he likes the way black nail polish looks. 

So when he swings by her place, he leaves his helmet behind and brings Franzia instead, the kind of sickly sweet wine he’d normally never touch but manages to find bearable when he has Steph for company. It’s also typical fare for college parties - but by the way Steph’s eyes light up when she sees the box tucked under his arm, she’s had little time to indulge in the activities that come with playing the role of civilian university student. 

Instead, she spends her free time inviting formerly homicidal, formerly dead men to her cluttered little apartment, evidently so excited by Jason’s visit that he finds her dumping her entire nail polish collection out on the kitchen table. She beams at him as he carefully parts the sea of nail polish bottles to make room for the Franzia as she sets out Solo cups. 

When Jason smiles at her, he finds that he does mean it. 

“With a smile like that, you could charm anyone into bringing you home to meet the parents,” she informs him. “You should do it more often, Todd.” 

“No time to be breaking hearts when I could be out there breaking bones instead, Brown,” he replies easily, pouring wine into both cups and passing one to her.

“Porque no los dos? If I can do it, you can too.” At Jason’s expression, Steph takes a coy sip before smirking at him. “What, jealous you aren’t getting laid on the regular?” 

“Speak for yourself. At least I can account for the quality of my taste,” Jason fires back and represses the image of Dick’s reverent hands holding _Pride and Prejudice_ , of Dick touching him with just as much care and attention.

Steph, unaware of the thoughts swimming from his head, only huffs at him. “Leave Tim alone. I know for a fact you guys are finally getting along so there’s no need to pretend around me.” She begins uncapping the bottle. “Besides, this guy’s a sweetheart. He’s a detective on the GPD.” 

“So he’s not one of us.”

Steph is silent for a moment. “Yeah, he’s not one of us,” she says, her expression tightening. “I know, I know. I’m jeopardizing the Mission, my secret identity, his life. You don’t have to tell me twice —” 

He can see her hands curling on the table, nails digging into her palms, and on instinct, he reaches out to lay his hands on top of hers. She quiets down. “C’mon,” he says. “Who do you think I am, B? I’m not here to judge all your life choices and make you feel like shit for each and every one of them.” 

She laughs a little at that, her shoulders loosening. “Wow, way to tear into the guy.”

“You know it’s true.”

Steph gives him a small lopsided smile. “Yeah, I do.”

“Attagirl.” He squeezes her hands once before letting go. “Anyways, what I meant to say before I had to go and fuck things up was just that dating outside the caped community is a new and different experience.” 

“You haven’t fucked up anything, Todd. We’re good, you and me.” She gestures at him to extend his hand and when he does, she takes his thumb and begins brushing a thin layer of polish over the nail. “And yeah, you’re right. It’s going to be hard dating him when he doesn’t know what it’s like to live the way we do. ” 

“It’s better that he doesn’t know what it’s like, he’ll be all the more well-adjusted because of it,” Jason replies. 

“In a perfect world, nobody would ever have to know. Just our luck, though, there’s a few of us poor fuckers who paid for the price of that knowledge with our lives. I can count on my fingers the number of us who’ve died for the greater good and had to be brought back to life afterwards — ” 

“Put down your hand, Todd, I haven’t finished with it,” Steph raps out. When Jason stills, she says much more quietly, “I know. And I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” 

He usually hates it when people offer him their pity. But she says it because she does know what it’s like to die alone, bones heavy with the knowledge that nobody will ever come for her, for him, for any of them. She knows what it’s like to die by force, absorbing the blows that rain down and never stop, spilling out onto the ground and into the darkness.

She too had not gone gentle into that good night. She too had raged, raged, against the dying of the light. 

And he has all the respect for her because of it. 

______________

A few nights later, an intruder breaks into his apartment, setting off all his alarms in the process. Jason would’ve been on guard except for the fact it was the fucking clumsiest attempt anyone had ever made and he had no doubt he could handle the intruder with both hands tied behind his back. 

That is, until the intruder turned out to be a drunk Dick Grayson listing into his arms. 

“Boy Blunder,”Jason says once he’s gathered himself, running clinical hands over Dick to confirm no injuries and catching a whiff of Dick’s alcohol-soaked breath. 

“Hey, big guy,” Dick replies back with a crooked smile. It turns out Jason knows Dick’s uneven smiles better than he thought because he knows it’s a pained smile, rather than a nervous or surprised one, when Dick curls a hand around his wrist and says, “Easy there, I don’t put out until the third date. Just kidding. _I’m_ the easy one.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Jason attempts to set Dick down on his couch with limited success, Dick’s hand shooting out to grab his collar and yank him down. It takes another moment for Jason to extricate himself from Dick’s grasp, only to meet Dick’s glazed eyes.

“I’m easy,” Dick repeats. “You know. ‘Cause I’m the bicycle of the superhero community.” 

“Don’t,” Jason says and tries to stave off the tightening sensation in his chest. “Don’t say that.” He thinks of the trust and affection Dick gives without asking for anything in return, and his stomach curdles at the thought anyone would try to ruin that. “Do you understand me, Goldie? Say it. You’re not — you’re not that.” 

He watches Dick swallow. “I’m not the bicycle of the superhero community,” Dick says slowly. 

“Good. Who put that idea in your head?” 

Dick rubs his arm. “It wasn’t anyone’s fault. Just met up with some old friends from the Titans. Things were good, mostly. Someone just happened to get carried away and made a joke about me settling down with Kori and how we never would’ve lasted. You know, because I can’t stop myself from sleeping with other people.” By now, his nails have dug deep into the flesh of his arm, leaving a row of crescent marks in their wake. “It’s fine. He’s right.”

“He’s not,” Jason says. He knows Kori has wanted to keep a distance from Dick but never pried into it or thought to cast blame on either of them. But hearing Dick lay it out in those words, he knows for a fact that their separation would’ve hurt Dick as much as it hurt Kori. “I know you need to stretch your wings and fly free sometimes but you wouldn’t cheat; those are two separate things and anyone who can’t tell them apart can go fuck themselves.” 

“You shouldn’t believe in me, Little Wing. I’m only going to let you down. Like I let down Kori.” Even now, the nickname falls from Dick’s lip with a worn affection. Jason hates it, that he’s become part of the weight Dick’s been carrying this whole time, the reason Dick thinks he’s not good, not enough. 

The anger coursing through him is different from the usual acidic green anger. It’s an anger born from fear and frustration, he realizes a moment later, as he lets out a sharp exhale and snaps, “Fucking hell, Dick, you haven’t let me down. I’m the one who gets to decide that, not you. I’m going to ask you again. What actually happened?”

Dick scrubs a hand over his face and when he drops his hand, he looks tired. “It’s a long story.”

“I’ve got time,” Jason replies. And he does. Always, for Dick. 

So Dick tells him. About Mirage and how Starfire blamed him afterwards. Then, biting his lip, in a much quieter voice, he says it’s not the first time. Jason has to fight to keep still, to keep his hands from curling into fists, to keep himself from breaking things, as Dick haltingly recalls Tarantula. He’d heard whispers before about how Dick didn’t come out of the final encounter with Blockbuster right; he hadn’t heard about the rain in the night, the cold settling in Dick’s body, frozen by the guilt of Blockbuster’s death, and how Tarantula’s unbearable heat hadn’t melted away the cold, only set him aflame. 

“It’s not your fault,” Jason says. His voice is fraught with emotion he can’t, won’t process at the moment, but he needs to tell Dick this in every way he can. He looks at Dick and repeats it again. “It’s not your fault. You know that, right?”

Dick’s eyes are pools of glassy blue seconds away from shattering. But he manages to say, “Yes. I know.”

“You didn’t deserve this. Any of this.”

“....I know.”

“I’m going to kill them.” Mirage. Tarantula. The fucker who put these thoughts in Dick’s head in the first place. 

“No no don’t do that.” And at last, Dick is in action, fumbling for Jason. “Jay, _no._ ” He reaches out to touch Jason’s face, to smooth a thumb between Jason’s brows. “It’s OK. I’m OK, you’re OK. Hey, if you keep frowning like that, there’s gonna be a permanent line there. Is that why you wear the helmet?” Jason looks at Dick’s crooked smile. His pained smile. His sad smile. Like the poem Bukowski wrote about his mother, beaten two to three times a week, showing him how to smile and it was the saddest smile he had ever seen upon the earth, like hell and hell and hell and hell, and nothing else.

Jason would do anything to make him stop smiling like that. Anything. So he says, “It’s not OK. You’re allowed to be not OK. And if you feel like you’re falling apart, I’ll be there to help you pick up the pieces. All of us will. OK?” 

“That’s a lot of OKs in one sentence,” Dick replies but his smile is cracking. He closes his eyes for a moment, presses his hands to his face, takes a deep breath and then another until a calm creeps over him. “Thank you,” he says at last. “For being here.”

“It’s my apartment, where else would I be?” Jason responds because there’s only so many kind things he can say in one day. He of course ruins his streak by adding, “You, on the other hand, are in no shape to be leaving. Stay.” Dick only nods, allowing Jason to lead him into the bedroom. “Take the bed, I’ll take the couch for the night.”

“That’s stupid. This is your bed, I’m not gonna make you leave it.”

“You’re allowed to have your own space, Dick. Especially after what you’ve told me.”

“But you’re not like them.” Dick’s mouth quirks. “I’m the one who gets to decide that, not you. So stay.”

“Fucker using my own words against me,” Jason grumbles but he concedes, unbuckling his belt as Dick too begins to undress for the night. He doesn’t look at Dick, out of respect. After the trust Dick’s put in him now, he can’t. Not for tonight.

When they both slide under the covers, Jason curls on his side in an attempt to put distance between the two of them. If Dick wants to close the distance, he can.

A moment of silence passes before Dick’s voice comes from the other side. “I do want to settle down, by the way.”

“What? With a wife, two point five kids, a nice house and a white fence?” 

“Not necessarily.” Dick’s voice is thoughtful. “Just with someone who’ll be by my side. Who understands what it takes to live this life. Someone to come home to.” 

Jason lays there, even as Dick falls asleep, and thinks about the fact it’s a ‘someone’, not ‘wife’. 

________________

Being with Cass is easy in the sense that she understands what it’s like to be flame returned to body of clay, brimming with a heat that threatens at any moment to crack through the crumbling outer shell.

His realization of Cass as a kindred soul had been completely unintentional; on a night where he had felt a familiar acid green rage pulsing beneath his skin and tearing through his body, he had flung himself back into the city, soaring higher and higher so the howl of bloodlust in his ears would be replaced by the rush of the wind. 

He’d been careless to collide with Cass in mid-air but so had she; they had tumbled through the sky until Jason blindly shot his grapple line out and swung the both of them up onto the nearest ledge.

They had lain there for a moment and as Jason struggled to gather his bearings, he had felt the insistent force of Cass’s heartbeat pushing against him. She must have been fighting to keep herself still but the shudders rippling through her compact body had betrayed her. 

When they had carefully extricated themselves, Cass had simply cocked her head and asked, “You too?” 

Jason had instinctively snarled, a fury bubbling up in him at the thought that she could possibly fathom the hell he had been through. 

Cass only looked at him impassively, the expression on her cowl blank and impenetrable. “It hurts, coming back to life. You are trapped in your body and you are burning alive.”

Jason’s throat swelled with shame and relief that she somehow knew. 

“Your head is filled with smoke. Your lungs forget how to breathe. Your blood boils. You are drowning.” 

“Yes,” he choked out at last. “ _Yes_.” 

“Me too,” Cass said and leaned in slowly to press her forehead against his. He had let her, even as he trembled at the alien sensation of her closeness. 

She had rested a gloved hand on the jaw of his helmet and said very softly to him, “Not good to be inside your head. It is better to be with others.” 

And it had been better, to let his body to run on auto-pilot and leave his mind behind. Better to set his sights forward, fixing his gaze only on the shadow in front of him instead of looking back into the darkness waiting to reclaim him. Better to rise above instead of sinking back into the pit that he had once emerged from. 

_All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return._

It had been better to fly with her than he could’ve possibly thought and Cass who had of course picked it up only patted him on the shoulder and replied, “See? I would not lie to you.” 

So Cass is his rooftop-running partner now. They’ve settled into a routine and when she silently lands next to him on the ledge of the Clock Tower, he says, “You take the lead this time.”

Beneath her cowl, Cass levels an unimpressed look at him. “It is always me who picks where to go. Your turn now.”

And he can’t say no to her so he only shrugs and replies, “Not my fault if you hate where we land up.”

It’s a sign of how far they’ve come that Jason doesn’t look at Cass when he leaps down and releases his grapple line. He trusts her to have his back, this little quiet girl who had been raised to be a killer but grew to have a profound respect for life, the shadow who ventured into the light and become all the more stronger because of it. 

He knows now what she can see in him - the coil of his muscles born from days of mindlessly fighting for survival as a resurrected corpse out on the streets, the span of his shoulders unfurling from the following years that had stretched his body taut onto a taller, stronger frame. 

He’ll tell her one day about what it felt like to die trying to save the mother that had sold him out to the Joker and she’ll tell him in return about how her mother killed her with a strike to the heart, only to bring her back to face the life she had wanted to surrender. 

But for now they share a silence that speaks volumes, drowning out the roar of a restless city. 

When they finally come to a stop, perched on one of the towers of Kane Memorial Bridge, Jason takes off his helmet, tucking it under his arm, and takes a deep breath. The chill of the night wind courses through his body. 

___________________________

Jason doesn’t think he’ll ever come to Dick until he does. It’s less out of intention than it is instinct; after the conversation with Babs, his mind had gone blank and his body had taken control instead, flinging itself into the air, swinging over rooftops, letting the rush of wind and the whir of the grappling line and the strain of his muscles fill the void stealing over him. He hadn’t thought of a destination but a part of him had recalled tracking down Dick’s address and latched onto the coordinates. An immeasurable amount of time later, he’s stumbling into the penthouse from the window, grabbing hold of the windowsill to right himself. 

“Hey, Jay!” Dick calls out cheerfully. He knows though that Dick is carefully scanning him over for the non-verbal cues indicating signs of distress. He doesn’t stop to think what Dick might see, only begins unlatching his helmet and pulling off his domino. The skin around his eyes burns from having the spirit gum peeled off so abruptly. But his eyes burn too, his throat and his heart. He needs to see Dick, needs Dick to see him when he says, “I found out. I found out from Babs.” 

He had swung by her place as usual, a habit made concrete since the time he had first come back to a world that had moved on but found her still waiting for him. And though he couldn’t stand any of the Bats at the time, he’d taken one look at brilliant and strong and determined Barbara, her eyes bright with a kind of understanding no one else could offer him, and yielded, pulling up a chair to tell her the latest intel he’d gathered and ask if she needed him to take out the son of a bitch who put her in a wheelchair. And she in turn had responded with her own information, a nod to the justice he sought and a reminder to keep himself in check under her watch, and a humorless smile that she could only continue her operations as the informant for the Bats as long as the son of a bitch who put her in a wheelchair still walked. 

This time around, she’d asked how Dick was and Jason had apologized impulsively. He knew they’d loved each other and that he should know better than to corrupt a love as pure as theirs by wanting Dick. He had admitted it, for the first time out loud to another person, but Barb had already known, maybe always known, informing him with a small smile that her time with Dick had come and gone and she’d made peace with it already, along with the fact Dick had always saved a place for Jason in his heart. He didn’t know what she meant; he had only learned recently that Dick hadn’t intentionally skipped his funeral.

“Dick didn’t tell you, did he?” Barb asked, but it was more of a statement. Her mouth tightening into a thin resolved line, she had made a decision in that split second to tell him and he felt the world shrink to the two of them. He sank to the ground, pressed his face to her knees, wept. She had stroked his hair as he had clung to her legs, trembling.

An hour after that conversation finds him here now confronting Dick. He knows it’s true, has to be true because Barbara told him, but he needs to hear it from Dick. So he says, “Babs told me what you did.” 

Dick freezes, a series of expressions flitting across his face too swiftly for Jason to catalogue. “Babs told you what?” 

“You killed him. The Joker. You killed him for me and Babs and Tim.” 

Dick runs a hand through his hair, looks away. “We’re really just digging through my whole past now, huh?” he says in response. 

“Please.” One word and it falls out of Jason with a terrible desperation, leaves him sounding far too young and vulnerable for his liking. He sounds like his past self and the realization hits him as hard as a blow from a crowbar. 

Dick picks up on it too, startled gaze fixed on Jason. After a while, he lets out a breath, looking weary. “I did,” he confesses. “And Bruce brought him back and undid it all. Doesn’t change the fact there’s still blood on my hands.”

“Don’t tell me you regret it,” Jason says. He can’t find it in him to smooth the edges of his cracking voice. “Don’t you fucking dare.”

“I was happy that he died in the moment. ‘Good,’ I thought. ‘He’ll never be able to take anyone away from me ever again.’” Dick’s expression twists. “You know what pushed me over the edge? I was beating the living daylights out of him and he said to me, ‘I hit Jason a lot harder than that.’”

Dick pauses for a moment. Jason can see in the way his eyes flick upward, his hands flex that he’s trying to maintain his composure. Seeing Dick try not to cry, more than anything else, causes Jason’s chest to ache. 

“It must’ve hurt so much,” Dick says finally. “You must’ve felt so alone. But you were so brave and strong through it all. You gave everything you had and more to try to save Sheila, even though you knew you weren’t going to make it. And you still must’ve thought in those final moments that you’d failed and that you were never going to be good enough. But God, Jay, I wish you could’ve known that you would always be enough for us. Always.” 

An animal sound of grief splits the air. It takes Jason a moment to realize it came from him, and he tries to speak again only to feel a choked sob lodge in his throat. He presses his hands to his face, digs his palms into his eyes to shove back the tears stinging at his eyes, but even gritting his teeth isn’t enough to muffle the noises of pain that fall from him. 

Arms wrap around him. “You can let go now,” Dick says quietly. “I know you’ve been hanging in there for so long but you can let go. I’ve got you, baby bird. I promise.”

Jason can only bury his head in Dick’s shoulder and curl his hands into the fabric of Dick’s shirt as he cries. He lets Dick hold him and Dick cards a hand through his hair, mouth pressed to his temple, murmuring words of comfort that wash over him like waves smoothing over a battered shore. 

It takes him a while to pull himself together but with some effort, he lifts his head to look at Dick and manages to rasp out, “Sorry.”

Dick only brushes a thumb against his face to wipe away his tears. “You never need to apologize to me for that,” he replies. “After all, a wise man once told me ‘You’re allowed to be not OK.’” 

They stay on the floor for a while, Jason curled against Dick, sharing the quiet together. Jason can feel the rise and fall of Dick’s chest, can hear his own heartbeat pounding in the silence, thinks now that he finally understands the only love poem to ever have stayed with him through life and after death and back again. 

_How do I love thee? Let me count the ways._

_I love thee to the depth and breadth and height_

_My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight_

_For the ends of being and ideal grace._

_I love thee to the level of every day’s_

_Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light._

_I love thee freely, as men strive for right;_

_I love thee purely, as they turn from praise._

_I love thee with the passion put to use_

_In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith._

_I love thee with a love I seemed to lose_

_With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,_

_Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,_

_I shall but love thee better after death._

____________________________________________

Of everyone, it’s of course Damian who has to ask Jason about Dick. Kids these days have no respect for their elders, even if Damian has come a long way since he stole Jason’s helmet. 

When Damian asks him The Question, he frames it as “What exactly are your intentions towards N, Hood?” because they’re out on patrol; and while the question normally would’ve thrown Jason for a loop, he’s completely blindsided by the fact Damian had to ask him at the very moment they’d just broken into a meeting between the heads of a human trafficking ring and landed in the middle of a firefight. 

He has to crack skulls and shoot (with rubber bullets) kneecaps, all while seething at Damian’s impudence. Even worse, he still feels compelled to look out for the kid, even though he can perfectly handle himself, as shown by the bodies the two of them unconscious and leave sprawled on the warehouse floor.

Jason deliberately steps on the ringleader’s hand as he approaches Damians and hisses, “What the fuck, Robin? Forget about my intentions towards N, what are _your_ intentions in asking me that question at the worst possible moment?”

Damian’s mouth twitches into a smirk. “I had to ask you at a time you would have no choice but to reflect on the matter. You have to admit, my inquiry has started a train of thought you cannot stop.” 

Jason looks at the conniving brat, hands on his hips, doubly smug with the satisfaction of a good patrol’s work and having caught the Red Hood off guard. Taking a step towards the door, he snaps, “I’m _not_ having this conversation with you with an audience present, especially these sick bastards.”

Damian only folds his arms over his chest. “As if I would let you go without an adequate answer.” 

Oh, for fuck’s sake. “Fine then,” he growls and hates that it comes out sounding like Bruce. “We’ll take this somewhere else.”

Thirty minutes later, after ensuring the GCPD have taken over the case, they’re seated on a ledge overlooking the city with food and drink. Damian had at least the decency to allow him to pick the location and of course, if he was going to be visiting his favorite gargoyle, he’d have to take a chili dog to go. Damian next to him had only turned his nose up, even as his stomach rumbled, and Jason had no choice but to buy the kid . 

As Jason takes off his helmet and runs a hand through his hair, Damian flicks the tab of his soda can. “As I was saying, Todd.” He takes a loud slurp. “What are your intentions towards Grayson?” 

“I’ll do you one better, Wayne. Why is this any of your goddamn business?” 

“Because he’s mine.” Damian sets the soda down and looks at him. In a split second, he’s traded his obnoxious flippancy for a razor sharp scrutiny. “He’s supposed to be mine. But the idiot that he is, he can’t contain himself. He has to go and insert himself shamelessly into other people’s lives and become important to all of them. And you’re correct in that it’s none of my business. It doesn’t mean I don’t look out to make sure he doesn’t hurt himself getting too attached to the wrong people.” 

In the past, Jason would’ve picked up only on the last jab about Dick getting too attached to the wrong people but enough time has passed for him to realize how Damian lashes to keep others away from his own wounded core. So he replies, “You’re important to him too,” and when Damian lets out a little snort, says “You think I’d do something like lie to make you feel better? You’re his Robin, of course you’re important.” 

“As were you. As was Drake.” 

Jason stares at him. If not before, the desperation in Damian’s voice is evident now. The sight of Damian’s green-gauntleted hands curling into fists is familiar but seeing him duck his head and hunch his shoulders makes Jason acutely aware of what it was like to need to prove himself at any cost. 

And Damian had paid the ultimate cost, flinging himself at Death, stumbling as waves of arrows plunged into his flesh and the Heretic rained blows on him, broken body dribbling blood, scrabbling for purchase as the Heretic’s sword ran him through.

He’d paid a cost that Bruce would have never envisioned and he still didn’t think he mattered.

“Are you serious?” bursts out of Jason before he can stop to process the implications of the hypocrisy of his shock. 

Damian bares his teeth. “Don’t test me, Todd.” 

“Let me spell this out for you once, kid. You’re _his_ Robin _._ Tim and me, we were Robins, sure, but never his. So no one’s going to be able to replace you. Not like. Not like—” 

“My father,” Damian says calmly.

“Yeah. Your old man.”

“And your father as well, incidentally, who very well might prefer you all to me.” When Jason levels an incredulous look at him, Damian only sighs. “My understanding has always been that he chose to take you, Grayson, and Drake in of his own volition. Conversely, he had no choice but to accept me as his flesh and blood. It would only be logical to conclude Father’s only feelings for me stem from biological obligation rather than any genuine affectionate sentiments.” 

Jason scrubs a hand over his face. They could go around in circles retorting back and forth like this and it wouldn’t change a damn thing because they’re far too similar.

“Listen, Damian.” At the sound of his name, Damian freezes, looks over warily at Jason. “I would sell my soul for Dick, even though I’m pretty sure I don’t have one anymore. I don’t know if that’s the answer you’re looking for, but I do know you’re the same as me. And if you’re keeping an eye on him, I can rest a whole lot easier knowing there’s someone who’ll look after him. Even in the case that I’m gone. That’s what you’d want if you were the one to kick the bucket, right?” 

Damian is silent for a moment but he lets his fists uncurl in favor of tracing over the golden R on his chest. “Yes,” he finally admits before looking up at Jason. “I suppose you’ll do. For now.”

“Good talk,” Jason says, but he finds that a weight has been lifted off his shoulders as Damian nods at him and returns to sipping at his soda again, swinging his legs. 

_______________________

What fucking sucks about returning to life is having to watch other people die but what’s worse is having to watch other people come close enough to the edge of the death that he can feel their soul threatening to slip to the other side. 

Dick comes onto the operating table white as a sheet but drenched in blood and comes out with the color restored to him but not his consciousness. Jason knows intellectually that Dick’s chances of waking from the coma are high, especially given how the blood transfusion had stabilized his condition in the nick of time, but it doesn’t change the fact that Jason has to wake up in the coming days knowing life is moving on while Dick remains still. 

When he’s not punching the daylights out of Gotham’s nightly transgressors, Jason keeps vigil over Dick. The longer Dick remains motionless, the more the air swirls with tension, raising Jason’s hackles. He has to force himself to still, breathing slowly so he doesn’t further stir the storm of emotions brewing in the room. 

When it rains, it pours - and his body remembers it all. 

So he has to read instead, read to keep the storm at bay and to fill the air with other things, words that ground him, words he hopes reach Dick from wherever he is now. 

He reads from a book of modernist poetry featuring T.S Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Wallace Stevens. He imagines Dick walking through the hyacinth garden in the Wasteland, neither living nor dead; making his way through the crowd of ghosts in a station of the metro; caught up in autumn winds, flocked by blackbirds that fly around his head.

But on the day he finds himself missing Dick in aching ways he can’t put into words, he reads Dick a Charles Bukowski poem. This one is one that Jason can recite from memory, one that he knows from heart because it had been the first poem he had encountered after the Pit to speak to him, settling deep in his bones and sinking into his core. 

“There’s a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out,” Jason says to Dick and he tears the confession out like tearing a knife out of a wound. “But I’m too tough for him. I say, stay in there, I’m not going to let anybody see you.”

“There’s a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I pour whiskey on him and inhale cigarette smoke and the whores and the bartenders and the grocery clerks never know that he’s in there.” He had smothered the bluebird under the leather jacket and red hood but its desperate fluttering had made itself known to the girls around the corner who tucked themselves under his arms, their trembling bodies pressing against him; the bartenders who slid glasses of rum across the counter when he arrived past closing hours to thank them for their intel; the bodega owner a block over from his place who handed packs of cigarettes over proud updates on his daughter’s progress at college. 

“There’s a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I’m too tough for him. I say, stay down, do you want to mess me up? You want to screw up the works? You want to blow my book sales in Europe?” He’d shouted those things at Dick too in different words. 

_You going to get in my way again, Dickiebird? Screw up everything, blow all the plans I’ve set in place to purge Gotham sky-high?_

_You willing to bloody your hands, Dick? To sell your soul to the devil so no one else will ever have to go through hell and back the way you did?_

“There’s a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I’m too clever,” Jason says. “I only let him out at night sometimes when everybody’s asleep.” He’d come to know the blue bird far too well in the still hours of the night that stretched into morning, watching the rise and fall of the splash of blue across Dick’s chest as the two of them surveyed Gotham’s skyline. The blue bird was most beautiful in the sunrise, lit with a warm glow that made Jason’s own body ache in turn. 

“I say, I know that you’re there so don’t be sad.” _You’re here now_ , Dick had said to him with yellow daffodils and an aged copy of _Pride and Prejudice_ and his mouth brushing against Jason’s temple. _I know,_ Jason had said back to him with his eyes tracing the robin on Dick’s back. _I see you._ Dick, gilded in the sunlight but who had never escaped the rain, curled up on the pavement with Tarantula’s shadow looming over him, buckling under a torrent of grief and guilt with Joker’s blood on his knuckles, visiting Jason’s grave alone. Dick, who chose to be good and believe life was worth living in spite of everything he had lost, who stood his ground in the face of darkness because he had resolved to seek out the light at the end of the tunnel no matter what it cost him. 

Dick, who Jason had loved in life and death and life again.

“Then I put him back but he’s singing a little in there. I haven’t quite let him die.” Jason reaches out to take Dick’s hand, rubbing a thumb over Dick’s knuckles and then his pulse. His thumb touches a faint fluttering heartbeat and he holds onto it for a moment, the knowledge that Dick is still here in spite of everything, will be here when the sun comes up the next morning and the morning after. 

He swallows down the burning want to be there with Dick every morning.

“And we sleep together like that with our secret pact,” Jason says. “And it’s nice enough to make a man weep — ” and his voice catches, “but I don’t weep, do you?” 

There is only quiet that follows the closest he’s ever come to a confession. Scraped hollow of all the things he had always wanted to say but could never, still can’t put into words, he takes his leave.

He comes back eventually because he wouldn’t know how to quit Dick if his life depended on it. He keeps visiting and it’s a testament to the time that’s passed and the rebuilding of burnt bridges that he doesn’t get the hell out of dodge when he finds any of the others by Dick’s bedside. 

So Jason takes up the hobby of wood-chiseling and learns how to carve little bats out of wood while Tim perches in the windowsill with his laptop, brow knitted in concentration and fingers flying across the keyboard. Jason lines the bats on one of Dick’s bedside drawers while Steph on the other side chatters a mile a minute about her classes at Gotham U and her dates with Nick. Cass, who must have learned about the bats from Steph, comes to visit with a pack of markers in hand to share with him as they color in the bats together. And Damian, the artist in the family, takes one look at the row of bats, surprise flitting his features before offering a begrudging “Not bad, Todd.” 

Incidentally, the one time Jason’s visit coincides with Bruce’s is when Dick wakes up.

Jason had only stepped foot into the room to find Bruce silent and still beside Dick. Bruce had lifted his head to watch Jason and what he found in Bruce’s dark blue eyes was not the unmoving cold he had always imagined but a gaze clouded with grief that resembled his own grief, a kind of haunted understanding that could only resign itself to the inevitability of the pain that came with caring for people too much for his own good. In recognition of the mutual grief they shared, Jason had fought his initial instinct to run for the hills in favor of forcing himself into the space, pressing up against the wall. 

Dick must somehow sense the astronomical importance of the moment because the next thing Jason knows, Dick begins stirring. As he exchanges looks with Bruce, he has only a chance to glimpse Bruce’s immense relief that mirror his own feelings before the two of them spring into action, Bruce placing a hand on Dick’s back to help him sit up and Jason snagging a glass of water to tip into Dick’s mouth. 

When Alfred, with his uncanny intuition, shows up a minute later to provide assistance, Jason steps back. His watch over Dick is complete; what Dick needs now are people who will take care of him without letting their feelings get in the way. He allows himself a single moment to linger by the doorway, locking eyes with Dick, before he flees.

__________________

It takes Dick another week to track him down. Granted, Jason had made it easy for him by showing up to the Manor but he had hoped at the very least to be able to slip in and out to check on Dick’s recovery while escaping detection. He had just stopped by to duck his head in, having been notified by Alfred that Dick was asleep, only to find Dick decidedly awake and alert in bed.

Before he can even think, he’s turning heel, reversing his trajectory to run, go somewhere Dick can’t find him until he’s sorted through his own feelings and come back better, good enough for Dick. 

“Jay, wait!” 

Because he can never say no to Dick, he freezes with his back to Dick.

“You read me a poem about a bluebird,” Dick blurts out from behind him. “I remember it.” Jason’s hand clenches onto the doorframe, knuckles whitening with the implications of Dick hearing, understanding what he possibly could have meant — 

“I love you,” Dick says into the silence. 

A surge of panic floods through Jason as he whirls around to face Dick with a plea on his lips. _Don’t say it again. Don’t say it again. If you say it again, I won’t be able to hold back anymore._ He only has time to look at Dick, who blinks as he registers his own statement, before his eyes clear and he smiles up at Jason with a dawning look of wonder. “I love you, Jason.” 

Jason can only kiss him in response. Dick’s hand slides into his hair, curls as their mouths slide together and Jason swallows the little noises that spill from him, soaks in the warmth of Dick’s body sinking into his own. 

“Jay,” Dick breathes, his voice catching, and it sears Jason to see Dick up close and unraveling, heat rising to his cheeks and hands sliding down to grip Jason’s leather jacket. He is easily the most beautiful thing Jason has ever seen and Jason lets his want burn through him this time, reaching for Dick again to press close to him. 

When Jason steps back, Dick grins at him.

“Today’s already off to a great start, huh?” He tilts his head. “The real question, though, is if you’d want to spend tomorrow and all the days after that with me.”

 _Yes. Always. If you would have me._ are all replies that rise to Jason’s lips. He swallows them down and says instead, “Don’t go asking questions that you already know the answer to, pretty bird,” but Dick understands anyways, leaning up to kiss Jason again with an unfurling smile.

__________________

When it thunderstorms again, Jason finds himself out on the fire escape again, watching the rainfall and the flash of lightning streak through the sky. 

But this time, when he slides open his windowsill, he finds not complete darkness but the sound of a light switch being flicked on and Dick Grayson standing there, wearing one of Jason’s shirts and Batman boxers. He has a towel tucked in his arms. 

A storm of his own brews in Jason’s ribcage at the acceptance in Dick’s bright blue eyes. Dick only smiles at him and says, “If you stay out in the rain any longer, you’re going to catch a cold.” 

It doesn’t matter that Jason’s immune system has changed since his death, Jason’s body aches for the warmth of Dick’s words. He swallows, then sheds his jacket and boots, lets Dick coax him onto the living room couch. 

Dick kneels in front of him, drapes the towel over Jason’s head, and begins drying his dripping hair. A lump forms in Jason’s throat and he hooks a finger in Dick’s collar, pulls him closer until he can slot their mouths together. He closes his eyes, feels the sweep of Dick’s eyelashes and Dick’s hands resting on his legs, before Dick pulls away to lead him to their shared bedroom.

After stripping off the rest of his clothes, he slides into bed after Dick, who reaches for him, thumbs sweeping over the divots of his autopsy scars with a familiar ease. 

It feels just as easy for Jason to say, “I love you” back to Dick.

Seeing Dick’s eyes light up and a smile unfold on his face is like watching him fly, the thrill of the leap; like the first day of spring, the song of a robin.

Hope is a thing with feathers and it accepts his untamed wilderness and cesspools of darkness and unforgiving edges, never asks a single thing of him.

He wants to give it the world.

**Author's Note:**

> things i would have liked to write in but didn't have the chance to include jason's interactions with kate kane, duke thomas, and harper row as well as dick losing his temper. as i also have a thesis to write, my hope is to write a sequel piece with all these moments after finishing my current projects.  
> thank you for reading! i'll be returning shortly to this fic to link all the literary and poetic references to ensure all works are properly credit :)


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